Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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Tag: native hawaiians

Tad DeHaven does a fine job of exposing the mere window dressing that are the cuts in President Obama’s FY 2010 budget proposal. I’ll not add much to that other than to say that while Tad gives Obama’s predecessor a deserved hard time for his own paltry efforts to rein in spending, President Bush’s Education Department budgets looked downright Draconian compared to what the Obama team just produced.

Bush’s FY 2009 ED budget proposal included nearly $3.3 billion in cuts, generated by eliminating 47 programs. Given the dismal performance of all federal education efforts, this was obviously far too little, but compare it to Obama: His proposed budget would cut just twelve measly programs from ED’s budget, for a puny savings of about $551 million. And if that doesn’t give you a powerful feel for just how unserious this administration seems to be about saving taxpayers even a thin dime or two, look what program is not among those proposed to be cut:

EDUCATIONAL, CULTURAL, APPRENTICESHIP, AND EXCHANGE PROGRAMS FOR ALASKA NATIVES, NATIVE HAWAIIANS, AND THEIR HISTORICAL WHALING AND TRADING PARTNERS IN MASSACHUSETTS

The purpose of this program is to develop culturally based educational activities, internships, apprentice programs, and exchanges to assist Alaska Natives, native Hawaiians, and children and families living in Massachusetts linked by history and tradition to Alaska and Hawaii, and members of any federally recognized Indian tribe in Mississippi.

For this whale of a waste – and so many others in the ED budget – to have survived portends nothing but ill for the nation. Nothing but ill.

Today the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the resolution Congress passed in 1993 to apologize for U.S. involvement in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy—a determination that remains controversial among historians—did not affect Hawaii’s sovereign authority to sell or transfer the lands that the United States had granted to the State at the time of its admission to the Union. In an opinion by Justice Alito, the Court correctly explained that the words of the Apology Resolution were conciliatory and hortatory, creating no substantive rights—and indeed the resolution’s operative clauses differ starkly from those which provided compensation to, for example, the Japanese-Americans interned during World War II.

Importantly, the Court also noted that it would “raise grave constitutional concerns” if any act of Congress purported to cloud Hawaii’s title to sovereign lands so long after its admission to the Union. This last point is perhaps most important to the ongoing debate over the “Akaka Bill,” which would create a race-based entity to extract political and economic concessions from the state and federal governments on behalf of ill-defined “native Hawaiians.” It is delicious irony that Hawaii’s attorney general, Mark Bennett, an Akaka Bill supporter, secured this victory.

Just as Hawaii is now allowed to develop state lands for the benefit of all its citizens, hopefully Congress will in future refrain from inflaming racial divisions and instead treat all Hawaiians, regardless of race, with the legal equality to which they are entitled.

Further Cato materials on the above: Here’s our brief in the case, Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Here are articles I wrote on the case and on the on the Akaka Bill. Here is a write-up of a debate I had at the University of Hawaii last month. Finally, here is a podcast I did for the Grassroot Institute (Hawaii’s free-market think tank) – where, among other things, I correctly predicted the Court’s vote today and the scope of its opinion.